Teaching
I teach a number of courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level. Below you will find the courses I have taught, have helped teach, and/or helped develop. While what I teach changes from semester to semester, I am happy to be in touch on any of the material in any of the courses below.
LAS 132/LAS 260: Business Ethics
This course aims to prepare and familiarize students with the ethical dimension of business, especially in strategic decision making. The course delves into the literature in contemporary business ethics, including various approaches and assumptions in business ethics, value creation, and measuring impact and ethical business through various case studies, paying attention to both the local and global context.
THEO 12: Theology of the Catholic Social Vision
The Theology 12 course studies the ecclesial and communal dimensions of the Christian faith with an emphasis on Catholic social teaching. It explores the question of what it means to be a Christian and Church in today’s wounded and broken world. The course provides students with the opportunity to enter into dialogue and direct personal contact with individuals and communities living on the margins of Philippine society. In the context of these encounters, students critically reflect upon the signs of the times and their own lifestyles, employing other disciplines to analyze social realities. This analysis is brought into dialogue with Scripture and the Christian tradition toward developing a faith-inspired, interdisciplinary view of Philippine society and the planet. The faith vision that emerges challenges students to live in solidarity with those on the margins through a spirituality that is responsive to the situation and needs of our people and committed to justice in collaboration with all peoples of good will.
THEO 13: A Theology of Marriage, Family, and Vocation
In response to the question, “What is my role in the greater scheme of things?” Theo13 focuses on the discussion of the human person created in God’s image as the basis for the vocation to love (FC 11) and holiness (LG 39‐42) in accord with one’s meaning and purpose (SpEx 23). Emphasis is given to chastity, marriage as both a human institution and sacramental reality, and the Christian family as a domestic Church. The course invites students to examine questions of sexual morality and challenges confronting Filipino families in their call to solidarity and the common good.
DLQ 10: Discerning Life's Questions
With the background from various core courses, this Ignatian integrative course draws from philosophical and theological perspectives in discussing selected life questions, e.g., suffering and the pursuit of happiness, brokenness and the pursuit of wholeness, finitude and the infinite. It proposes approaches to making life decisions, developing moral imagination, and cultivating leadership and commitment. By its very nature, life questions need a more reflective approach that combines phenomenology, hermeneutics, and Ignatian discernment.
THEO 36i: Food Justice: Perspectives from Theology, Ecofeminism, and the Social Sciences
This course facilitates an exploration of just food policies and food systems growing from the experience of the global food crisis, emphasized in the UN SDG #2: zero hunger. The food justice movement is consistent with the Catholic mission of temporal liberation for the marginalized. Christ invites the Church to build the Kingdom of God in the world, and to do so, the Church responds to the call to feed the hungry, drawing guiding principles from the social sciences, ecofeminism, Sacred Scripture, Tradition and the very human experience of food from people around the world and in the Philippines today.
RELED 241: Engaging Contemporary Topics Through Dialogue
This course is designed to enable students to study the Triple Dialogue of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conference (FABC), especially with the poor, Asian cultures, and other religious traditions, as well as dialogically engage contemporary issues on the environment, poverty, family life, etc., by creating socially relevant learning experiences or catechetical materials focused on inculturation, interfaith dialogue, and/or social justice.
RELED 205: Revelation-Faith
In a world that is characterized by suffering, it is inevitable that a Christian is confronted with the question of where God is in the face of it all or even with the question of the existence of a loving God. Due to a variety of reasons, many Christians are at a loss in responding to these concerns. This course on revelation-faith seeks to answer these questions of who God is based on the Judaeo-Christian understanding of revelation and faith, particularly as it reached its climax in the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ. The course will focus on a theological reflection of the Church’s understanding of revelation, as well as contextualizing it for Filipino students today.
RELED 207: Ecclesiology
The course is designed to enable the students to understand Catholic ecclesiology and present it to their students in a manner that is relevant and meaningful. Students are to be trained in handling primary sources of Catholic ecclesiological understanding (Scripture, Official Church teachings particularly Vatican II), coupled with reflection in the light of human experience. This course begins with the recognition of the fact that most academic courses on the Church remain ineffective in drawing students into a loving relationship with Jesus Christ through the Catholic Church. While on the one hand, this can be attributed to an overload of information and content that regular theology courses present, we acknowledge that, on the other hand, students find it difficult to relate the Church to existential questions in their life. This course thus wishes to help students understand the Church, it’s place in the faith-life of an individual, and its role in the world today.
TMP 332.05: Themes Related to Christian Social Ethics II: The Sex Abuse Crisis in the Catholic Church
The course explores the issue of sexual abuse in the Catholic church, including other issues that have caused, exacerbated, or perpetuated the abuse, such as clericalism and hierarchicalism, particular theological underpinnings of the issue, and other aspects of the institutional dimension of the Catholic church. Students reflect on these realities in the course not just to understand the causes of the crisis, but also to articulate a path forward by identifying what needs to be addressed in order to respond to the crisis with both care and justice, mindful of our particular contexts and communities.
THEO 72.04i: Bioethics: Discerning Issues in Healthcare
This interdisciplinary course discusses various tools and frameworks to reflect on and address various bioethical issues that they might face in the healthcare sector. Using and integrating concepts from theology, philosophy, biomedical sciences, and public health, the course helps students navigate clinical and public health issues in a contextualized manner and in ways that promote a healthier, more inclusive, and just world.
